Saturday, June 20, 2009

Blast from the Past #194: "The Chinese Connection" poster

This is an artifact from my student days in the mid-1970's at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. I had recently become a big Bruce Lee fan, and got very excited upon hearing that the Asian-American Student Association was going to be sponsoring a screening of one of his movies, "The Chinese Connection".

It's been a while (around thirty-five years... gack!), so I don't remember some of the details, such as whether or not I had already seen this movie (I think not). But what I do remember is that -- rightly or wrongly -- I felt there wasn't enough promotion on-campus for this showing, so I decided to make my own poster.



This was the result. I made a bunch of Xeroxed copies of the artwork and taped them up at strategic locations around campus. I'm not sure if it actually resulted in any more people coming to see the movie... but I tried.

One curious thing about this original that reminds me of how tight things were for me, money-wise, back then -- notice the curved corners on the right side? They remind me that I drew this thing on a piece of white posterboard-like paper which I salvaged from somewhere. I think it was some kind of packing material. As I recall, it wasn't the best drawing surface (too glossy), but it WAS free. -- PL

5 comments:

Andrew NDB said...

lol, very nice.

Dragon Turtle said...

@PL

How big of a martial arts movie fan are you?

Do have any particular favorite movies and martial artists?

~ tOkKa said...

-->> O GOD YEH !! !! Very tight , Pete!!

Newton Gimmick said...

I still find the stories of stuff you've used your artwork for amazing. Especially in the early days.

PL said...

"Dragon Turtle said...
@PL

How big of a martial arts movie fan are you?"

I wouldn't say that I am a HUGE fan -- probably more of a moderate fan.

"Do have any particular favorite movies and martial artists?"

I like Jackie Chan and Jet Li, though my all-time favorite is Bruce Lee. Back in the late 1970's I was such a big fan of "the Little Dragon" that I actually had my hair cut once to look like his! (It didn't work that well... I was already starting to get the classic Laird man receding hairline.) I remember that I actually tracked down and ordered some 16mm films which included behind the scenes stuff from "Enter the Dragon" and some trailers for other Lee movies -- and I didn't even have a 16mm projector! (These things are buried in a box somewhere out in my old studio.) -- PL